Dan Sandler, Anti-Semitic Elmo, Sentenced to One Year in Jail for Trying to Extort Girl Scouts

October 9, 2013

Dan Sandler, the man best known for spouting obscenity-laced anti-Semitic rants while dressed as Elmo in Times Square, Central Park, and other locations around New York, is finally going to jail–although not for that.

Sandler was sentenced to one year in jail on Wednesday for attempting to extort more than $100,000 in property from the Girl Scouts of America, and for stalking a member of the organization’s staff. As the Voice previously reported, Sandler worked as a temp at Girl Scouts of America’s New York headquarters years before his arrest.

In July of last year, Sandler began sending threatening e-mails and photos to an unnamed employee of the Girl Scouts of America, and continued to do so, prosecutors say, through April. Starting in September 2012 and continuing through April 2013, he attempted to extort the more than $100,000 in property from the organization, too.

Sandler worked at the Girl Scouts’ New York office years ago, after he was deported from Cambodia in 1999 for running a website called “Rape Camp,” featuring an interactive live bondage sex show where he invited viewers to “humiliate these Asian sex slaves to your hearts content.”

The Girl Scouts confirmed to the Voice in September that Sandler had worked at their offices, but added he “was never directly employed by Girl Scouts of the USA.” Sandler told the New York Times that he began dressing up as Elmo after he lost his job at the Girl Scouts. That interview was conducted a month before prosecutors say he began stalking the Girl Scouts employee.

Sandler was arrested in San Francisco in May, and extradited to New York. He pleaded guilty to grand larceny and stalking charges in September.

‘The World Trade Center was conceived by vested interests, promoted by pressure groups, brought into being by a handful of powerful men for reasons of monetary gain or personal pressure, and indirectly subsidized by the taxpayer’